Our Sympathy

Commercial fishing is the most hazardous job in the world. Those working in this field face myriad dangers to life, including drowning, machinery-related accidents, and hypothermia. Commercial fishers, and the communities in which they live, are well-acquainted with death. This co-existence with the end of life prompts commercial fishing communities to adopt rituals designed to understand the water and wring mercy from the force controlling it. Some communities place statues of mariners at the harbor channel to stand as sentries guarding the coming and going of the local fleet. Some erect likenesses of the Virgin Mary cradling fishing boats in place of the infant Jesus. Superstitions abound on any open-water vessel; rules apply to avert disaster like refraining from bringing certain fruits aboard as fruit seeks the earth and will drag a vessel down with it, or a refusal to leave port on a Friday, the unluckiest day of the week. In Dillingham, we hold an annual Blessing of the Fleet to seek protection and guardianship for our local salmon fishing fleet and to honor those who have lost their lives in the dangerous way we choose to make a living.

The Blessing of the Fleet is held in May or June, late enough to make fishing the foremost thought of town residents and early enough to seek blessing before many fishers have launched their 32 foot-long Bristol Bay commercial salmon vessels. The Blessing of the Fleet ceremony is multi-denominational and includes the participation of all religious leaders in town from the Moravian Church pastor to the Catholic and Russian Orthodox priests. In this, all town residents are represented.

The first part of the Blessing of the Fleet is comprised of the singing of hymns, recitation of Bible verses are recited, and lifting of prayers for a good season and the safe return of our people. We give thanks for the life we are given and seek for it to continue amid the dangers we face through our fishing lifestyles.

The second part of the ceremony features the reading of the names belonging to those lost to the water and the ringing of a ship’s bell to commemorate each one. For some of the names on the list, this is the only remembrance as the sea does not always return the bodies she claims. During the reading of the names and ringing of the bell, all of Bristol Bay is a cemetery. Some shed tears at the loss of their loved ones and for lack of any physical place to grieve. Some listen to the reading of the names with trepidation for if a family name is not already on the list, it means the family still owes a life-debt. Most, however, listen solemnly to honor the lost.

The last part of the Blessing of the Fleet ceremony requires that a wreath be placed on the water in the name of the dead and for the hope of the living. In this action, the ceremony is closed in the attitude our community takes toward the end of life: we mourn, we accept, we seek strength, and then we simply continue to live according to our ways and traditions.

One of the most difficult tasks in life is holding a funeral or memorial service for a loved one. Unfortunately, they are inevitable. Yet, many of us never talk about how we want to be memorialized. Let’s face it: death is a difficult and emotional subject. There are so many uncertainties about it that we allow ourselves to avoid the discussion. When tragedy strikes, the experience can be so much more overwhelming, especially if the loved one is younger. Here are so helpful ideas to make the experience less stressful and more healing.

If you feel up to it, take full charge of the event yourself. Many families who do this, report that this choice is very healing. If you feel too overwhelmed enlist the help of some close friends. This will help them in their grieving process as well. Allow family members and friends to use their talents.

Many services with which I have been involved have been celebrations of life. Friends and families share their stories and memories to the group. These words will fill the hearts of the attendees and remain with them much more than the words of an unfamiliar minister or funeral official. Humorous stories almost always find their way into the service. This is how we want to remember those who we love. We want to feel joy and happiness about their lives. We want to hear how they touched the lives of others. There is something comforting about hearing an entertaining anecdote and being able to chuckle, “That’s Uncle Ted.” Sure, we’re sad. We will miss their presence in our lives, but creating these memories allows us to feel their presence in our lives always.

Create a collage. Find posters, movies, ticket stubs, photographs, artwork, anything and everything personal to your loved one. Many families find it healing to get the whole family together and put together a photo album. Other families use computer software and create photo or video shows. These can even be easily transferred to DVD or video tape and shared with others. Or they can be put up onto personal web pages. A couple of popular places to memorialize loved ones are AOL and Myspace.com.

Along with a collage, families often find it comforting to share personal artwork or writing. You can even create a soundtrack of your loved one’s life. Finding one’s favorite music and putting together a personal album can get very involved. This, again, offers an opportunity for people to use their creativity. All of these things can be easily reproduced and distributed.

A lot of people are going to offer you their help. They want to do their part in helping memorialize someone who has touched their lives. A gift you can give those people is set up a memorial fund or scholarship. Donate it to a cause that was meaningful to your loved one. There are many organizations that serve the community through donations. This is a great way to allow the spirit of your loved one to live on and touch more lives. It doesn’t place a great burden on any one individual, and it becomes a big gift.

Another type of project with which I have personally been involved is a service project. Maybe your loved one was an animal lover. You can get a group to volunteer with a local animal shelter or zoo. Hospitals, shelters, missions, blood banks, and many other organizations thrive on the voluntary support of community members.

A few final notes: you are under no obligation to hold services immediately after your loss. Many people report that they feel like they have to rush right into funeral services. This is not true. The memorial service is for you and your friends. You are going to feel such an array of emotions. Some days will be better than others. Let the activities leading up to the actual service be an opportunity to experience some healing. Also, make the service meaningful for you. Any old minister or funeral director can go through the pomp and circumstance of a funeral service. Only those truly closest to you and your family can make it a meaningful experience.

According to most research we all know someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one. It can be one of the most awkward situations in which both the grieving and the friend of the grieving find themselves. Of course I’m referring to talking about it. Nearly all of us have found ourselves standing beside someone, wanting to say something, anything. Just what do you say? The answer really is dependent upon your relationship with the grieving individual.

If you are truly a friend, then it should be easy to know what to say. You would hope, right? Well, that isn’t always the case. My sister died in 1999. Her death was the result of a hit and run automobile collision. The collision happened the evening before my university graduation. This was also Mother’s Day weekend.

Obviously this event was quite a blow to our family. There were many people who were extremely warm and consoling. They truly ministered to our family’s emotional and physical needs. The phone rang off the hook. The community really came forward to let us know that they cared.

Despite their concern, some were extremely insensitive. Many simply made the mistake that their beliefs about life and death, god or salvation, took precedent over our emotional needs. I’ll never forget all of the phone calls I received from friends, or the conversations I had face-to-face where almost the first thing I was asked was, “Jeremy, did she know the Lord?” Now, I know that they were truly concerned, but this was not helpful. Whether she knew the Lord or not is not exactly comforting. If I knew the answer was yes, then they could be comforted. If the answer was no, then there was nothing they could do about it. This just left me hurting, and feeling like they weren’t really concerned with how I was doing.

One of the most common mistakes people make in situations of grief is they assume that others are going to deal with the circumstances as they believe they would. Another example I have is from a similar situation. A young woman attending the local community college drove her car off of a country road and into a telephone pole. No one knew what truly had happened. At the funeral, the father of the young girl was extremely upset. His daughter was 19 years old. He told me in confidence that if another person came up to him and told him that his daughter was in a better place he might lose it and punch them out. I listened to him. I assured him that he was perfectly correct to believe that anyone who told him that was wrong. A nineteen-year old daughter belongs with her family. A family who has been robbed of a future that they envisioned with their daughter does not deserve to be robbed of their beliefs as well.

Sensitivity dictates that a person trying to console another who is grieving should not so much as talk but listen. Or if one is inclined to speak, share memories of the deceased. Tell stories of personal interactions to which they were not privy. Listen to them. Ask them how they feel. Don’t tell them how to feel. Usually, our efforts to help don’t.

When the time of the loss is close to the time of your interaction, it’s actually more comforting to simply offer condolences. Tell them you’re sorry. Offer them help. If you’re not sure what to do, talk with someone who is closer to the family.

If the time of the loss is much further from your interaction, ask them how they’re dealing with things. Usually, just offering opportunities to talk about it is the most helpful thing you can do. Grief can be a very confusing, depressing, frustrating, and overwhelming experience. It will hit each of us differently. The most helpful thing we can do for one another is be supportive. Life goes on, but it can be hard for the grieving to move in that direction. Call them. Visit them often. Get them out. Help them find ways to express their feelings, but also diver their attention to the world around them. With your patience, compassion, and understanding, they will find peace.

My father is not a mortician, a cemetery attendant, nor a gravedigger by trade, but he has prepared the resting places of friends and family nonetheless. It is the way of men in rural Alaskan communities where there is no funeral industry, and where volunteers complete the preparations for a funeral.

The first step in rural Alaska’s gravedigging is to find a location. There aren’t really any family plots in Dillingham, our small community in southwestern Alaska. We group graves by family when we can, but often there isn’t room in our tiny old cemeteries. Since there is no funeral director to plan the whole thing, graves are not dug in neat rows. Instead, Dillingham’s cemeteries feature graves that are diagonal to each other, cradled in the roots of ancient trees, or stepping down a hill slope to the beach. When someone passes on, men step up to dig the grave in whatever location the family of the deceased has selected. On the day a gravedigging begins, there may be five to ten battered pick-up trucks parked alongside the gravel roads leading to our cemeteries.

Gravedigging takes a team. A backhoe is used if the men can get it to the gravesite without disturbing the rest of any cemetery residents, but often the work is done with shovels and buckets. The grave is measured out, and then the men start digging. Because the work is physically difficult, the diggers take turns in the hole, digging until they tire or until the mosquitoes become more than they can bear. Then, they exchange places with a man above and take their break drinking coffee and discussing commercial fishing, the lifeblood of the region. In the winter, the ground must be painstakingly chipped away as southwestern Alaska’s clawing winds tear at clothing and exposed skin, making the grave the best place to be.

Three years ago, my father helped dig the grave for his closest brother. Rather than being a task too emotionally hard for him, my father took comfort in the opportunity to go before his younger brother and ensure that the final resting place would not be a home built by strangers, but by familiar hands and soaked with the voices of family. No one is left completely alone in the grave.

Because ours is a community of fishermen accustomed to a physical lifestyle, the work it takes to dig a grave for a close friend or loved one mediates distance from death. Gravedigging allows motion, the most obvious sign of life, to meet death and creates a moment where physical labor, the regular routine of our lives, touches death and colors it with normalcy. There is no clearer expression that death is a part of life than men who lend their backs and garden shovels to prepare a place of rest.

Alaska’s state nickname is “The Last Frontier.” Covering nearly 587,000 square miles and possessing nearly forty percent of the coastline in the United States, the state has a wide variety of geographic features including mountains, forests, seas, lakes, rivers, and tundra flats. Many Alaskans take advantage of the state’s geography as part of their lifestyles and engage in adventurous living professionally or as leisure activities and find that the outdoor experiences Alaska offers enrich life and create memories. Unfortunately, Alaska’s environment is harsh, and people die pursuing outdoor activities.

One sad aspect of an outdoor death is that sometimes a body is never recovered. Cold water doesn’t always release the dead, and a deep ravine may hide the victim of a fall. If recovering remains presents too great a risk, rescuers may choose not to endanger additional life. Since viewing the body of a loved one is often an important step in the grieving process, it is sometimes hard for bereaved friends and family members to accept the reality of death when the body of a missing person is never recovered.

Sometimes, the remains of a victim are not suitable for an open casket viewing. The manner of an outdoor death can be extremely violent in nature, causing injury beyond what is appropriate for mourners to view. It is possible for the bereaved to experience the same difficulty in moving past the denial stage of grief since they, like those suffering a loved one who never returns, do not see a body-absolute proof that death has occurred.

In a situation where those who grieve cannot view the body of their loved ones, sometimes they use items to represent the form of their loved one. These substitutions can bring great comfort to mourners.

In choosing items to represent the deceased, Alaskans often make choices that speak to the experiences that make up life in The Last Frontier. Hunting and fishing are common activities for a victim of an outdoor death, so pictures of memorable successes or favorite outdoor clothing are logical choices. Living in the biggest state in the union also means that Alaskans often own boats, snowmobiles, airplanes and other unique modes of transportation, so small pieces of these vehicles sometimes represent a deceased pilot, fisherman, or winter traveler.

Alaska is also the home state of many talented artists and craftspeople, so works of art may stand in for human remains. Beaded angels, stained glass likenesses of scenery, or woven grass baskets are all choices to represent a creative and adventurous personality. Sometimes, a family will commission or purchase a work of art for their home so that their loved one will remain part of their daily lives.

Sometimes, a life in The Last Frontier ends as a symbol.